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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28704882">What Comes After</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/FiresFromOurHearts/pseuds/FiresFromOurHearts'>FiresFromOurHearts</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Small Harry Potter Things [43]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>A little bit of trauma just for fun, BAMF Percy Wealsey, Gen, Ministry of Magic (Harry Potter), Post-Canon, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-01-12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-01-12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 06:53:42</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,301</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28704882</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/FiresFromOurHearts/pseuds/FiresFromOurHearts</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>When the war is over and won, Voldemort finally dead, there is still much work to be done. Percy goes back to work, day after day, and does his best to keep the Ministry from collapsing. It's a tough job, but he's not alone.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Percy Weasley &amp; Ministry Employees</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Small Harry Potter Things [43]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/719196</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>116</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>What Comes After</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Percy Weasley does not come out of the war with Voldemort unscathed. No one came out of the war unscathed. And, of course, Percy didn’t just have scars from his own battles, but his family had been torn apart by death and, even before then, his own choices.</p><p>And now he won’t ever get the chance to apologise to his brother, who’s body has been buried and gravestone made up. He hadn’t cried at the funeral, too tired and exhausted by halves and nothing ever got solved by crying. So he goes to the funeral, he stays, wears clothes of mourning, roams on the edges of his family, not quite part of them but not quite separate either.</p><p>Then he goes home, sleeps, wakes up with his alarm at five thirty and goes to work. Work is hard. The Ministry is in chaos—it’s always been like that, to be fair, inefficient and hopeless and Percy had once dreamed to make it better, to improve it. Nowadays, all he dreams about is an uncontrolled fall into darkness.</p><p>He’s not entirely sure what his position is at the Ministry, doesn’t really care for it anyway. There’s so many things to deal with, so many empty desks, and all he can do is complete his work and hold onto whatever’s left. The only department that’s been really busy and is in some kind of order is the Auror Department, and that’s simply because the Minister has focussed his attention there due to the public’s fear over Death Eaters.</p><p>The Death Eaters have fallen. The worst have been herded up and will be imprisoned. The ones that remain are cowards, running and hiding, or those who were forced into the lifestyle and couldn’t escape. Percy knows how that feels. After all, he’d been in the Ministry when it’d fallen. And he’d remained, even as others fled, and part of that was because he had no where else to go. But it’s also because the- the side of good, the side of light, whatever they’re calling themselves, needed people in the Ministry.</p><p>Beneath the eyes of the Death Eaters, Percy slaved away. They watched him carefully, at first, but Percy had publicly stepped away from his family and everyone knew it. It was old gossip. It’s what meant he slipped beneath the radar, and it’s what let him send out warnings to various people, let him forge documents that meant people survived.</p><p>That did not stop him from suffering under the cruelty of the Death Eaters, who thought it was fun to use crucios liberally and without care. Why would they? No one would stop them, no one would care, they’d only avert the eyes and forget about it the next minute.</p><p>But such things create hate, create ties where ordinarily there would be none. And so, when Voldemort died, Percy apparated to the Ministry, easily lost amongst the broken castle as they chased the remaining Death Eaters from their halls. Along with his colleagues, he took back the Ministry with a snarl and bloodied fists.</p><p>All of that has led him to where he now is—in an important position in the Ministry though no one exactly knows what. Thanks to his previous positions, he knows little bits of everything and seems to be the first person people touch base with, especially those who worked alongside him previously. The Minister is a busy man and no one truly knows him. Or they do, but they haven’t worked alongside him. Kingsley is known to have been part of the Order of the Phoenix, but that doesn’t change the fact they don’t know how he’ll respond to their queries. By all accounts, he is a good man and one worth working with—but he is a warrior.</p><p>They have all become fighters thanks to the war, but some more than others. Kingsley turns his gaze to the Auror Department, rightly perhaps, and the others don’t know where to begin. There are so many changes to be made, so many things to be recalled. The Death Eaters did a number to their government, already broken and suffering as it was.</p><p>Percy steps up to the task. He sleeps and eats and breathes his work. People come to his office, which always has its door open, and he’s frequently in meetings or walking down hallways, and sometimes all he knows is the endless to-do list that never stops growing.</p><p>The responsibility wears at him. The long hours, the little sleep, the endless work. The bags beneath his eyes deepen, become darker, but Percy does not step back. The world doesn’t need him, nor does his family broken as they are, but the Ministry does. He does good work here. That does not, however, mean he has to do it alone.</p><p>And he isn’t alone. Maybe his family hasn’t reached out except to tell him of the funeral, and maybe some of that’s on him. But working in the Ministry beneath Death Eaters formed ties that have not left, even with the end of the war.</p><p>It’s a ragged group, the numbers changing every week, but they eat lunch together every Friday in one of the meeting rooms in the top floor of the building. Previously, it had been left to dust, ignored and forgotten. But then, it’d quickly been realised that the Death Eaters rarely ventured up to those rooms, and so the other members of the Ministry found peace there. Solace, if only for a little bit of time.</p><p>“Hey Percy, you doing alright?”</p><p>Percy looks up from where he’d been staring at his lunch. The person who spoke is from the Department of Magical Transportation, Aarti Parkinson. She’s now one of the major personnel of the department despite only being part of it for four years. He smiles, and it comes to his lips so easily here. It’s strange. “I’ve been worse,” he answers with a shrug. “Just a lot of work.”</p><p>“What you need,” Vance Woods, from Invisibility Task Force, says, “is an assistant.”</p><p>“Where am I going to get one of those from?” Percy asks with a laugh. “Can’t exactly pull people out of my hat, and I’m struggling because we have no one joining up.”</p><p>“Actually,” Sal Greengrass, Broom Regulatory Control, says. “I’ve got a cousin who’s interested in joining the Ministry and doesn’t really mind where she ends up. She’s submitted her application but, well,” they wave their hand, “you know how it goes.”</p><p>You’d think due to having almost no staff that the Ministry would focus on going through applications quickly. Unfortunately, that’s one of the things no one is dealing with because no one knows who’s meant to be dealing with them. As a result, it frequently ends up on Percy’s desk a few weeks later. Or possibly longer, he’s not really sure anymore.</p><p>It’s not a bad idea, actually. And if Sal’s vouching for their cousin, it’s likely that Percy can trust them too. “If you can get their application and owl it to me, I’ll look over it,” Percy decides. “They’re going to have to get some revamped security. I mean it’s lax as Merlin’s balls here, but it’s probably needed.”</p><p>“Do you have that security?” Someone asks, eyebrow raised.</p><p>“I don’t even know what my job is. You think I know my security clearance?” Laughter ripples across the room and Percy smiles as he relaxes. He might be struggling with his workload and the responsibility that comes with it, might be distant from his family, might be dealing with things he shouldn’t be—but he’s not alone. He has friends, he has support, and he has a job he laughs, no matter how difficult it is.</p><p>Life will get better. He just has to keep believing that.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Listen, you cannot tell me that Percy came out of the war unscathed especially when working beneath Death Eaters the entire time. Working in the Ministry had to be worse than Hogwarts (though they weren't children, so at least there's that) because there were no teachers trying to help - just the employees and them alone. And there had to be others like Percy, how didn't want to follow the Death Eaters but didn't really have any choice in the matter. </p><p>And you can't tell me it was easy for him to simply rejoin his family either especially with one of his brothers dead. </p><p>But anyway, yeah. Hope you enjoyed?</p></blockquote></div></div>
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